We Sold Out!
We are almost there. On the 6th of October 2018 we will be showing the first screening of Omo Pastor. The first film under IAMedia. Before I continue I want to say that I couldn’t have got to this point without Tumi Mary (the writer of Omo Pastor), Okiki Concepts, EriStudios, KFMedia and my family! I am going to break down how I created a buzz about the project and managed to sell out the premier with just under two weeks to go before the premier.
"You have to meet the people!"
Friday the 7th of September, I am eating some chicken wings at the Prince of Peckham with a business partner planning an event we were going to deliver videography services for. Tickets for Omo Pastor have been out for a couple of days at this point.
“Hey do you guys mind if I sit here,” says this beautiful woman with gorgeous eyes. Apparently, our table had really good lighting. After a minute or so of silence, she asks us what we were doing there and what we did for work. Side note, I came to eat in peace and on the drive to Peckham, I was hit with a really bad migraine so, I was in no mood for meeting someone new.
After my business partner gives his intro I go on to sluggishly say how I am a photographer and run a marketing agency. She looks at me and says that by my description and attitude she doesn’t believe in me or my brand. Harsh. Then I tried to justify my lack of enthusiasm because I wasn’t feeling well but she wasn’t having it. I ended up finding out she was a pretty big DJ who tours around the world… a tough lesson to learn.
This experience reminded me of a video where Will Smith notes how he learnt from Arnold Scwarzenagger that to sell a film ‘You have to meet the people.’
It is all well and good meeting people but you have to consistently show your best self. My brand is relatively new; I need to have an infectious glow and show no signs of self-doubt or people will question my credibility. After that awkward experience, I went ‘on tour’ and went to three events per week to promote Omo Pastor and ‘meet the people.’ I even did some spoken word in Shoreditch to promote the film.
Organic Reach – Influencers
I effectively started subtly marketing Omo Pastor for about a year on my personal Instagram page (@imisi.x). I only started regularly posting on our dedicated Instagram account (@Omopastorproduction) at the start of September.
In June and July, we interviewed pastor’s children who fit our key demographic. We asked them trivial questions such as what is the best and worst thing about being a pastors child but also really intimate questions around trust and their relationship with their parents. Not only did this add to the community vibe of the project but the interviewees became brand ambassadors and their networks were compelled to want to learn more about the film.
When I was ‘on tour’ to all these different events I found at least one person had heard about Omo Pastor even at the spoken word night in Shoreditch where most of the attendance weren’t from an African/Nigerian background. Many of the people I met had seen one of the interviews that we had filmed.
Paid Advertising
Test, Test, Test I was consistently fidgeting with the adverts for Omo Pastor, marketing is not an exact science. Our target audience in Leymans terms were Nigerian Christians who lived in London between 25 – 40 years old.
After we released our trailer on our Instagram page I thought that was all we needed and people will be hooked. The first campaign composed of:
Ad = Trailer,
Call to action = Purchase Tickets
Landing Page = Ticketing site.
After a day, our click through rate (CTR) was £1.70, my budget for the campaign was £30 so this was a very expensive campaign. To put into perspective the average click through rate for my IAMedia clients is 20p.
The strategy of the campaign had to change. September was a very competitive time to promote a film in London our target audience would also fall into the target audience for films such as The Intent 2 and Yardie. I was constantly seeing adverts for these films on my Instagram feed and they surely had a bigger budget than I did. I had to get creative, my method was to try and get our audience off of the social network and onto the IAMedia website where I could sell to them more before asking them to purchase a ticket. The strategy looked like this:
Ad = Still from the film
Call to action = Click to watch the trailer
Landing Page = IAMedia website Omo Pastor Page.
2nd Call to action = Ticketing site
By asking them to click to watch the trailer it is a much friendlier way of engaging the audience. Secondly, by leading them to the IAMedia website we can tell them why the project is important (sell to them more without any distractions). Our site is much more flexible than the third-party ticketing site and we can show them more media. Finally, after all of this information they should hopefully be sold and we give them a call to action to purchase tickets.
I was very strict on my campaign because we were doing so well organically and after the changes that I made our click through rate fell to 60p, in total I spent £30 on adds, sold 7 tickets and reached 15,000 people.
I am ecstatic about selling out the event with less than 2 weeks to go and look forward to doing more screenings in different cities! If you think this film should be shown in your area please message me! Also, I will be speaking on Premier Gospel Radio about Omo Pastor on Monday the 1st of October at 4.20pm, make sure to tune in!
This post was originally written in October 2018 to watch Omo Pastor on Amazon Prime click here
Imisi Adefala
(@Imisi.x)
(@Omopastorproduction)
(IAMedia.uk)
